Roxana Saberi

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I met Jason Rezaian in 2003, at Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. We were among the handful of Iranian-American journalists then freelancing in the country, and we were both motivated by the desire to help improve the understanding between Iran and the U.S. Over the years, I have followed Rezaian's reports. His work in The Washington Post has been informative, insightful, and balanced.

It has now been more than a month since Rezaian and his Iranian wife, journalist Yeganeh Salehi, were arrested in Tehran. Based on what has been reported, and on my own detention in an Iranian prison in 2009, I have an understanding of what they might be experiencing.

New York, July 24, 2014--The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a Washington Post report today that says Iran has detained four journalists--three of whom are U.S. citizens--and calls on authorities to release them immediately. Jason Rezaian, a U.S. citizen and a correspondent for the Post, and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, an Iranian correspondent for the United Arab Emirates-based newspaper The National, were taken into custody in Tehran this week. The report said the other two are photojournalists, but did not identify them. It is not clear why the journalists were arrested.

On the one-year anniversary of Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential election, it is a good opportunity for those of us who enjoy certain freedoms to speak out for journalists in Iran who are struggling to make their own voices heard.

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Does “name and shame” still work in the Internet age? After all, the massacre of 31 journalists and media workers in the Philippines pushed the 2009 media death toll to the highest level ever recorded by CPJ. The number of journalists in prison also rose, fueled by the fierce crackdown in Iran.

Amid the greatest national political upheaval since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran launched a full-scale assault on the media and the opposition. In mid-June, mass protests erupted in response to official election results showing incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning by a large margin against his main opposition challenger, reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi. The government responded with a wide-ranging and cruel campaign to suppress dissent. As protests against perceived electoral fraud spiraled into mass demonstrations, Iranian authorities threw dozens of journalists behind bars (where many were reportedly tortured), shuttered and censored news outlets, and barred foreign journalists from reporting. During the protests and crackdown, blogs and social media sites became front-line news sources. The crackdown increased the level of repression in a regime already hostile toward the press, and followed the months-long imprisonment of an Iranian-American freelance journalist, Roxana Saberi.

President Aliyev: The Committee to Protect Journalists urges you to open a new page in your government’s policies toward the independent and opposition press, one that would demonstrate tolerance for the critical role of media in a democracy. No other action would contribute to this goal as much as the immediate release of Eynulla Fatullayev, editor of the now-closed independent Russian-language weekly Realny Azerbaijan and the Azeri-language daily Gündalik Azarbaycan, who has been imprisoned since April 2007 on charges that range from defamation to terrorism.

New York, December 29, 2009—The Iranian government,
struggling to silence the many critical voices in the country, has arrested at
least 11 journalists since
Sunday, including former International Press Freedom Award recipient Mashallah
Shamsolvaezin and the prominent writer Emadeddin
Baghi. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the arrests and
called for the release of all detained journalists, who now number more than
30.